"A
quiet revolution is taking place in US politics.
By the time it's over, the integrity of elections
will be in the unchallenged, unscrutinised control
of a few large - and pro-Republican - corporations.
Andrew Gumbel wonders if democracy in America
can survive."

"A
Gannett News Service search found identical letters
from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion
of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also
known as "The Rock," in 11 newspapers, including
Snohomish, Wash."

"Don't
be fooled by the right wing spin machine. Republicans
are trying frantically to pretend that the Gropinator's
win in the recall represents a shift in values
in California to the right. From the drug-addled
Rush to the slimy Ann Coulter, the Voice of the
Right howls that the recall shows a failure of
liberal politics, and that California has rejected
the Democratic party."

"In
one of the most startling developments in the
middle east to date, the London Guardian revealed
that the United States has provided Israel with
nuclear missiles that can be launched from their
Dolphin submarines."

"I
have seven questions for you, Mr Bush. I ask them
on behalf of the 3,000 who died that September
day, and I ask them on behalf of the American
people. We seek no revenge against you. We want
only to know what happened, and what can be done
to bring the murderers to justice, so we can prevent
any future attacks on our citizens."

"This
bogey man is considered by the right to be sufficient
to cover any manner of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Even the egregiously traitorous act of deliberately
revealing the secret identity of an intelligence
agent must be beyond scrutiny. But who's kidding
whom?"

"All
of Washington and the country has been buzzing
for the last few days over a report that the CIA
has asked the Justice Department to investigate
the White House regarding a matter of important
national security. The wife of a former ambassador
named Joseph Wilson, it has been alleged, was
'outed' as an active CIA agent to columnist Robert
Novak by this White House in an act of political
revenge."

"Novak
identifies Plame as "an agency operative." NOT
an "agency employee." Operative. That's the word
he used, and if he knows anything at all, then
he knows the admin officials, at the very least,
were committing a felony by outing her to him.
Novak might be a shabby journalist, but he isn't
stupid. He had to understand the ramifications
of what he was being told."

"First
but not foremost, Bush's detractors despise him
viscerally, as a man. Where working-class populists
see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy who wouldn't
recognize a hard day's work if it kicked him in
his self-satisfied ass, intellectuals see a simian-faced
idiot unqualified to mow his own lawn, much less
lead the free world. Another group, which includes
me, is more patronizing than spiteful."

"With
one phrase Dick Gephardt has defined the issue
to be decided next November. Can a "miserable
failure" of a president win re-election? Bush's
victory would testify to a civic failure more
dangerous to the American future than any policies
implemented or continued during a second Bush
term. A majority would have demonstrated that
democratic accountability is finished. That you
can fail in everything and still be re-elected
president."

"Under
Clear Skies (these people are going to kill irony),
the plant will continue to shed this gentle beneficence
on us all for the next 17 years. According to
environmental groups, the administration's relaxation
of clean air rules, known as "new source review,"
will allow the plant to increase its emissions."

"'...people
progress in their moral reasoning (i.e., in their
bases for ethical behavior) through a series of
levels... The first is "the Preconventional Level,"
where one usually finds oneself in elementary
school. The first stage of this level is where
George, I believe, makes his home.'"

"The
American vote-count is controlled by three major
corporate players -- Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia
-- with a fourth, Science Applications International
Corporation, coming on strong. These companies
-- all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party
power grid -- have been given billions of dollars
by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization
of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election."

"What
first upset her was my suggestion that, looking
back, the French were right. They tried to stop
the United States and Britain from rushing headlong
into this mess. Don't we wish they'd succeeded?"

"The
letters that Paul Krugman receives these days
have to be picked up with tongs, and his employer
pays someone to delete the death threats from
his email inbox. This isn't something that can
be said of most academics, and emphatically not
of economic theorists, but Krugman isn't a typical
don."

"IN
AN INTERVIEW with The Associated Press, Kennedy
also said the Bush administration has failed to
account for nearly half of the $4 billion the
war is costing each month. He said he believes
much of the unaccounted-for money is being used
to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops."

"What
got Friedman's brain a-boilin' is the impertinent
suggestion by French diplomats that, if the US
invaded Iraq to bring democracy, then why not
allow Iraqis to vote. Vote! Can you imagine! It's
all that silly 'libertay, equalitay' stuff that
unsophisticated Americans believed before the
Patriot Act."

"I
rise today to voice my concern about the disastrous
turn which the fortunes of this nation have taken.
The Bush Administration, in a scant 2-1/2 years,
has imperiled our country in the gravest of ways,
and set us up for a possible crisis of mammoth
proportions."

"When
I ran for this office, I said the issue was, 'character.'
And just look at the characters around me. I've
gotten all their resignations today. And while
I've got some character left, here's my own good-bye
note too. Let's face it: I have held a title which
I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified.
You know it. And I know it."--We could
only wish this were true.

"Before
the World Trade Center hit the ground, Tom Brokaw,
the empty hair-do of US television news, announced
that the Twin Towers had been attacked because
they are Symbols of American Capitalism. As we
watched humans jump to their deaths from burning
windows, Tom had already appropriated them as
martyrs to a rising stock market and the enterprising
spirit of his advertisers."

"President
Bush's illegal war and occupation of Iraq has
left the Administration in a position of extreme
political vulnerability. He now wants the United
Nations and U.S. taxpayers to bail him out. Having
defied U.S. and world public opinion - which preemptively
opposed his planned, illegal invasion of Iraq
- the Bush administration wants to internationalize
responsibility for the U.S. quagmire in Iraq."

"Sunday
night, September 7, President Bush told the American
public and the world to expect more of the same
from his administration. More crimes against peace
and humanity, more deaths and destruction, more
debts and poverty. He wants everyone to help."

"The
rest of us should be careful not to be deceived
into thinking that the Iraqis need us, except
to pay damages for ruining their country. Think
about it, does the oldest city on earth really
need Paul Bremer's "expertise" to get back on
its feet? The UN, having allowed itself to be
used as an arm of US policy, is unfortunately
equally tarnished. Iraqis hate the UN as much
as they do the US, in part for their failure to
stop the invasion, in part for their obsequious
role in the murderous decade-long sanctions regime
that throttled the country."

"With
bombings, killings, human suffering all around,
and nothing in sight in Iraq but the bad choices
of continued military dictatorship or fundamentalist
Islamic rule, everyone but the war planners now
regard Iraq as a disaster."

"Now
Iraq will explode and Paul Bremer will be lucky
if he escapes with his life, as will some of our
top brass in Iraq. The killing of Ayatollah Hakim
was a major catastrophe for the Iraqi people,
but it will be an even larger one for the West,
especially the US and UK, along with Israel."

"Now,
Exxon-Mobil, the Number One campaign contributor
to the George W. Bush campaigns, has gotten their
big fat sloppy payoff. Last week, the Bushified
appellate courts in Texas ordered the Alaskan
judge once again to review the award."

"...now
might be the perfect time to drive home the linkage
between the Bush family, family money and the
Nazis. You can be sure the Bush family would use
something like this if they had the chance. Also
the timing couldn't be better. With Arnold Schwarzenegger
running for Governor of California, the media
spotlight is all over his father's Nazi past digging
for information on what role Arnold's father might
have played as a Nazi Storm Trooper."

"Nearly
70 percent of Americans tell Newsweek that "the
United States will be bogged down in [Iraq] for
years without achieving its goals." Yet 61 percent
tell the same poll that invading Iraq was the
right thing to do. The reason for this weird disconnect:
people think that we're in Iraq to spread democracy
and rebuild the Middle East. They think we're
The Good Guys. But the longer we keep patting
ourselves on the back, the more we tell ourselves
that the Iraqi resistance is a bunch of evil freedom-haters,
the deeper we'll sink into this quagmire."

"I guess
the lights never went back on at the Times. That's
the only acceptable explanation for the loving
Lewinsky The Paper of Record gave to the power
industry on the front page of its Sunday edition."

"While
the architects of war, the Cheneys, Rumsfelds,
and Wolfowitzs who sleep every night between clean
sheets, deem these terrible costs to be worth
bearing -- as well they might, because they personally
bear not an ounce of them -- the members of the
Peace Party often seem baffled. In view of the
evident futility, and worse, of nearly every war
the United States has fought during the past century,
how does the War Party manage to propel this nation
into one catastrophe after another, each of them
clearly foreseen by at least a substantial minority
who failed to dissuade their fellow citizens from
still another march into calamity?"

"To
paraphrase Shakespeare, "We have waded in blood
so deep that to return is as dangerous as to go
forward." We are stuck in Iraq. Period. We can't
leave, we can't afford to stay, we can't go back
to status quo ante. No apologies from the Bush
administration about lack of planning for "victory"
will permit us to leave. True, a pipeline explosion,
a firefight, another soldier killed has moved
from the front pages of our newspapers to Page
5 or 6, but the realities of the situation are
indeed daunting and will dominate the campaign
for president."

"After
all these years, it still amazes how Americans
can remain so disconnected from the world events
in which we play so central a role. I use the
term "world events" loosely, since the US today
seems to have lost even its historically tenuous
connections with the reality of the rest of the
world."

"Is
it part of our value system to remain on a permanent
war footing since World War II, shunting money
desperately needed for human services and education
into a military machine whose very size and expense
demands the fighting of wars to justify its existence?"

"Without
standards, we would end up just like George Bush
the younger, able to rationalize tax cuts for
the rich because the economy is so good and tax
cuts for the rich because the economy is so bad,
without bothering himself a whit over how this
can hope to be logical, how this can hope to make
sense to everyone else. In other words, George
employs no standards at all outside of the rightwing
political standard, characterized by religious
absolutism and a self-righteous penchant for 'winning,'
no matter what the stakes, no matter what it takes.
George, as a 'born again' theist, turns out to
be devoutly agnostic with regard to human logic."

"So
here's the real dilemma: If the Dems nominate
someone who is not very charismatic on TV and/or
is too intimidating to white males, they won't
have a candidate who has what it takes to beat
Bush among the rest of their constituency. But
if they nominate someone like Howard Dean, a well
educated, very successful, polished looking, and
articulate person, who should do well in front
of the cameras, or someone like him, they risk
losing more white male voters. Forget needing
a message. Forget qualifications. Like Andre Agassi
said: 'Image is Everything!'"

"Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of
bind this week when it turned that that Saudi
Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Realizing we'd
invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable
thing: he's come out against gay marriages."

"The
twin towers of the Bushist case for war -- 'imminent
threat' and 'connection to al-Qaida' -- have been
crumbling for weeks, even among the bovine intellects
of the Bush-whipped U.S. media, who had happily
munched the thrice-chewed cud of the Regime's
transparent mendacity during the long build-up
to the invasion. Wolfowitz provided the final
coup de grace on national television last Sunday,
during an appearance on Rupert Murdoch's propaganda
mill, Fox News."

"We
advocate action, positive action, unstinting action,
doing the only thing that human beings can do,
ever: Try this, try that, try something else again;
discard those approaches that don't work, that
wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight
against everything that would draw us down again
into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting
comfort, no true security; offer no final answer,
no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep
stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling
toward the broken light."

"Are
computerized voting machines a wide-open back
door to massive voting fraud? The discussion has
moved from the
Internet to CNN, to
UK newspapers, and the pages of The
New York Times. People are cautiously beginning
to connect the dots, and the picture that seems
to be emerging is troubling."

"What's
going on here in California, if you're lucky enough
to not have been following this, is that the economy
turned, so we're getting rid of the governor.
But what if we drive him out of office and the
economy still doesn't get better? I guess we'll
have to burn him. And if that doesn't work, we'll
kill his dog."

"But
what brought you back to the Tonight Show this
time? Long after Bush declared the Iraq War over?
You didn't have anything to promote except your
once-a-week gig on Hannity & Colmes on Fox,
or should I say, Faux. Not that long ago, wouldn't
you have been too embarrassed to even associate
with these right wing whackos? Now you be one
of them."

"While
Tony Blair thumped his chest and told congress,
"We promised Iraq democratic government - we will
deliver it," the ticker-tape at the bottom of
the TV screen said that our appointed chieftain
in Iraq, Paul Bremer III, had announced that there
would be no elections in Iraq - not until next
year, or later."

"No
administration before George W. Bush's ever claimed
such sweeping powers for an enterprise as vaguely
defined as the "war against terrorism" and the
"axis of evil." Nor has one begun to consume such
an enormous amount of the nation's resources for
a mission whose end would be difficult to recognize
even if achieved."

"It's
well past time to say it. Despite the weaseling
and finger-pointing--in fact, because of it--the
Forged Niger letter is indeed the smoking gun,
and the chips have yet to stop falling. Who wrote
the damn thing, and on whose orders? Who cares
whether Tenet, his job on the line, acquiesced
to including a literal truth that actually amounts
to one of the great frauds of the century? The
sheer audacity and cynicism of this coterie of
hacks and hustlers is simply astounding."

"If
all George W. Bush does, is read prepared speeches
written by others, vetted by others, put onto
ready to read scrolling devices for the lips of
the President, does that make the one that utters
the words a puppet -a void and vacuous being whose
only purpose is to mouth the threats and words
of others?"

"Next
test: Fearless Leader lies about something a little
more important than sex - something that cost
the lives of 1000s of Iraqi people and hundreds
of Americans too impoverished to find any other
way of life; while it also achieved the goal of
making most of the world hate us, lined the pockets
of the fat cats in the Carlyle Group, and left
deadly uranium toxic dust with its lingering promise
of cancer over an entire country forever."

"...each
time he appeared on the above programs, he immediately
started right in heaping undo praise on Bush and
hawking the war against Iraq. It was most obvious
on February 25th on the Tonight Show when only
a few sentences and greetings had been exchanged
when Jay asked him for his views on the war. Dennis
then grabbed the spotlight and began to shamelessly
and venomously bash the Germans, the French, and
by association, anyone else who opposed this war."

"But
the operation in Iraq will also serve as a launching
pad for further diplomatic overtures, pressures
and even military actions against others in the
region who have supported terrorism and garnered
weapons of mass destruction. Don't look for stability
as a Western goal. Governments in Syria and Iran
will be put on notice -- indeed, may have been
already -- that they are "next"? if they fail
to comply with Washington's concerns."